and I'll be there when the dawn breaks
by psychicchameleon
Summary: "He felt like he'd been sleepwalking through the past two weeks, and tonight he'd finally woken up to see the mess he'd made under an oblivious trance." Set after Undiscovered Country, in which Barba wakes up to realize the magnitude of his decisions.


**an: This is just another ending I had in mind for Undiscovered Country. Not so much an alternate ending as it is an extension. I attempted to address how out of character Barba seems in the episode with a semi-plausible explanation, and I also tried to give Liv a chance to reciprocate Barba's glowing review of her friendship, because I think he both deserves and needs it. As always, reviews are welcome, appreciated, and necessary for me to improve my stories.**

What was he thinking. What was he _thinking._

It was a blur, everything was a distorted fuzzy haze.

 _Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost._

The line, it was from Dante's _Inferno_ and it seemed especially apropos because he felt about as lost and severed from any kind of God as he'd ever been, not that he was particularly religious.

It was three o'clock in the morning and he was staring at his beige walls, boxes of worn books littering all the unoccupied spaces—books on law, philosophy, ethics. Ethics.

He'd laugh to himself if it wasn't entirely unfunny. Rafael Barba had spent the better part of two weeks breezing through on a caffeine and whiskey induced hallucination, and now, in the middle of the night, he was finally sobering up.

What the hell had he done? He wasn't lying on the stand—he really did what he thought was right in that moment. And he didn't regret, not in the slightest, that the child was no longer suffering. Still, the guilt heaved on his chest like a stack of those damn ethics books compressing his lungs.

Because, while he was glad Drew was in a better place, that choice was not his to make. He believed in the law, even when it failed him, but in a second of pure adrenaline and disregard for any legal or divine consequence he threw it aside and did something that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

One moment he was a bright-eyed ADA walking into the Manhattan Special Victims Unit with a snarky confidence and a blissful naivety, and the next he was here, with gray in his hair and shadows under his eyes and demons in his chest that no ungodly amount of scotch could kill.

He didn't remember calling her, he hardly even registered the sound in his ears as he buzzed her up, the knock on the door when she finally reached the place he called home.

"Liv," he said, more questioning than welcoming. She'd been waiting for this call for a while, for the emotions and gravity to finally catch up to him, because she knew it was only a matter of time.

Olivia would stand by Barba even if he walked straight down into hell—the choices he made, whether she agreed with him or not, she was there for him. She had the uttermost faith in his humanity, even when— _especially_ when—he didn't have faith in himself.

"When I saw him, he—he was just lying there. And he looked so peaceful, but I could hear the wheezing, the ventilator." He could still hear the ventilator, haunting him. That sound had haunted his nightmares for years, he'd woken up in a sweat, feeling like he was tangled in a mess of tubes and all he could hear ringing in his ears was that ventilator.

"I wanted him dead, Liv," he whispered, eyes rimmed in red, "I wanted him dead."

He wasn't talking about the child anymore.

Rafael had always been good with words. His teachers thought he was clever. His father thought he was a good-for-nothing smartass. He couldn't stand the fact that his son could read and write decently in English, much less excel at it, while he was stuck working for six bucks an hour because that was all his immigration status and broken English could get him.

He could still feel the sting of his textbooks being slapped against his face, the sharp cardboard edges breaking the skin of his cheek, the heavy weight cracking his nose. His mother would scream for her husband to stop, tears rolling down her face, but it never did.

"Rafa," she started, but the bitter brokenness in his eyes cut off the rest of her words.

"And then he showed up in that damn hospital room and he couldn't even breathe for himself, and I was still afraid of him Liv. After all those years, he still owned me."

Wet, hot tears were melting from his eyes, "I couldn't do it—I was too afraid to end it for him, and so I visited that hospital room every single day and watched those machines breathe for him and eat for him and live for him. And then one day I got a call, and it was all over, and I thought I was finally done. He didn't control me anymore. But the guilt stayed with me long after he did. And then, when I saw Drew, it was my one chance to make it right, Liv, it was my one chance to not be afraid anymore."

"You did the right thing, Rafael." She stared at him, willing him to believe in himself, because she was terrified of what might happen if he didn't.

"You're a good man, Rafa."

He didn't say anything, just collapsed into her arms and she held him like he'd held her so many times before, when she didn't have the strength to hold herself up anymore.

"If I have learned anything about you over the last six years, it is that you don't give up on anything, especially not people. I have watched you go into that courtroom and fight with everything you have—you put every single fragment of yourself into being the last advocate most of these victims have. You have changed my world every bit as much as you say I've changed yours and I can only hope to have a fragment of your resiliency and ardency. You'd fight for others with your dying breath, you'd give anything for someone you'd never met and Rafael that is why I know you did the right thing for that baby. And, regardless of if you believe me or not, I need you to fight for yourself now."

By now her eyes were glassy with emotion, and she could feel the tightness in his chest like it was her own.

"Promise me you'll do that?"

He heard her words, felt them tear through his chest, his heart.

"Rafael, you're free now." And just like that the heaviness that had been pressing on him, crushing him, seemed to become a little bit lighter, providing him a kind of relief he hadn't felt in a long time.

He felt like he'd been sleepwalking through the past two weeks, and tonight had finally woken up to see the mess he'd made under the trance.

Yet, just as quickly as the darkness of the past few weeks had caught up to him, stopping him dead in his tracks and sobering him up to a cold reality, the dawn was breaking.

Liv stayed there with him all night, holding him while he took everything in, and when the light crept through the thick curtains in the morning, she would be there to help him pick up the pieces—to fight back from the bottom with the same resiliency he'd shown all his life.

Because she might've shown him colors—but he'd shown her himself, the good, the bad, and everything in between. He'd opened her heart. She was him, now. She loved him.

And, damn it all, she was going to help him move on.


End file.
